A leopard has sparked panic in India by straying inside a hospital, a cinema and an apartment block while evading its would-be captors.

Authorities closed schools and colleges in Meerut, 60km northeast of the Indian capital, when the leopard was seen prowling the city’s streets.

The big cat was found inside an army hospital and shot with a tranquilliser dart. But it didn’t stay put for long.

“He managed to break the iron grilles and escaped,” said district magistrate S.K. Dubey. “He then sneaked into the premises of a cinema hall before entering an apartment block. After that we lost track of that cat.”

In a speech delivered to the Australia-Canada Economic Leadership Forum last night, Mr Abbott insisted the government would honour its pre-election commitments to maintain health and school spending, but also said the rate of spending growth in the longer term had to be reduced.

Shirtless Hackett
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The body of a man who was reported missing in northern Queensland has been found.

Edward Kerley, 34, was last seen by a family member at Shaw, near Townsville, on Friday.

His family had been unable to contact him since.

Police say the body, which is yet to be formally identified, was found in bushland at Black River on Monday afternoon.

They say there are no suspicious circumstances.

Edward Kerley’s body has reportedly been found.Source: Supplied

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Brazil and the European Union have agreed to lay an undersea communications cable from Lisbon to Fortaleza to avoid further spying by the United States, Reuters reports.

At a summit in Brussels, Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff said the $185 million cable project was required to “guarantee the neutrality” of the internet. She wants to shield Brazil’s online traffic from US surveillance.

“We have to respect privacy, human rights and the sovereignty of nations,” Ms Rousseff said. “We don’t want businesses to be spied upon.”

The latest Newspoll shows Labor leading the Coalition government 54-46 on a two-party-preferred basis. Opposition Leader Bill Shorten has drawn extremely close to Tony Abbott as preferred prime minister, drawing 37 per cent of support compared to Mr Abbott’s 38.

The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children says some victims were told they were lucky to get attention from the star BBC television and radio presenter.

Last year, a police investigation concluded that Savile, who died in 2011 aged 84, was a prolific, predatory sex offender who abused children as young as eight for more than 50 years, often in institutions such as schools and hospitals.

“The responses these victims received when they first revealed Savile’s sickening crimes makes heart-rending reading,” said Peter Watt, the NSPCC’s director of national services.

“They were ignored, dismissed, not believed, laughed at and astonishingly, told in some cases they should feel lucky he had paid them attention.”

“I would like to express my sadness at this tragic loss, and offer my sincerest condolences to all members of the family,” said Department of Child Protection and Family Support director general Terry Murphy.

“The Coroner and the Ombudsman will now undertake investigations to establish cause of death and to review the circumstances and events which preceded this tragedy.”

The boy’s 15-year-old father was charged with aggravated grievous bodily harm last week after the premature newborn was discovered with life-threatening injuries.

The violence in Syria has reportedly killed more than 140,000 people and forced millions more to flee. Most travel to neighbouring countries, like Lebanon.

“They have lost their families and their childhood has been hijacked by war,” Jolie said of the refugee children she met. “They are so young, yet they are bearing the burdens of their reality as if they are adults.”

“I have failed to understand that you can fail to be attracted to all these beautiful women and be attracted to a man,” Mr Museveni told reporters as he signed off on controversial anti-gay legislation which includes life prison terms for “repeat offenders”.

“Homosexuals are actually mercenaries. They are heterosexual people but because of money they say they are homosexuals. These are prostitutes because of money.”

The 71-year-old Scot was in a bar in Los Angeles, waiting to appear on Conan O’Brien’s chat show, when he noticed a group of Australian dancers.

“The guy who was in charge of them came over to me one day and said, ‘Billy, I’m a big fan, I’m from Tasmania’,” Connolly recalls. “He said, ‘I’m a surgeon and I have been watching you walking, you have a strange gait’. That was the way he put it.”

The notorious drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman has been formally charged with violations of Mexico’s drug-trafficking laws, starting a legal process that makes his swift extradition to the United States unlikely.

Guzman was charged with cocaine trafficking on Sunday. Mexican officials might renew a string of other charges as well.

The drug kingpin escaped a Mexican prison in 2001 and spent the next 13 years on the run. He was arrested on Saturday morning by Mexican marines acting on US intelligence.

Guzman faces charges in at least seven US jurisdictions and America has been pushing for his extradition.

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